Air Quality Plans

Air quality plans are comprehensive strategies designed to meet or maintain compliance with federal and state air quality standards.

The two most common types of plans are attainment plans and maintenance plans.

Attainment plans show how the region will attain the air quality standard for a specific pollutant by a certain date, known as the attainment date.

Maintenance plans are prepared after a region has attained an air quality standard and can demonstrate continued compliance with the standard.

Development of these plans requires extensive collaboration and cooperation with other agencies within the region, and includes businesses, industry, and the public.

​Current Planning Efforts

Redesignation Substitution - 1979 Ozone Standard

The Sac Metro Air District prepared a
Redesignation Substitution (RS) request. This request demonstrated that
the Sacramento Federal Ozone Nonattainment Area (SFNA) met EPA's requirements,
based on ambient air quality monitoring to be redesignated
as attainment for the revoked 1979 1-hour National Ambient Air
Quality Standard (NAAQS) of 124 parts per billion (ppb). The RS Request was
approved by the Sac Metro Air District on September 28, 2017 and has been forwarded to EPA
by the California Air Resource Board (CARB). Once approved by EPA, this RS
Request will redesignate the SFNA to attainment and remove the previous Clean
Air Act obligations associated with that standard. The RS Request can be
downloaded here.

Attainment Plan - 2008 Ozone Standard

The Sacramento region is classified
as a severe-15 nonattainment area for the 2008 NAAQS. The Sac Metro Air District along
with the other air districts which comprise the SFNA, developed a
plan to demonstrate attainment of the 2008 8-hour NAAQS of 75 ppb by an
attainment year of 2024. This plan was
approved by the Sac Metro Air District Board on August 24, 2017, and the four other air
districts that comprise the SFNA (Yolo-Solano AQMD, Feather River AQMD, Placer
County APCD, and El Dorado County AQMD). CARB approved the Plan on November 16,
2017. The Plan will be forwarded to EPA. The Plan can be downloaded here.

​Future Planning Efforts

​Attainment Plan - 2015 Ozone Standard

In 2015, EPA promulgated a new 8-hour NAAQS of 70 ppb. In 2016, the California Air Resource Board recommended that the region be designated nonattainment in their report Recommended Area Designations for the 0.70 ppm Federal 8-Hour Standard. USEPA is expected to make
final classification and designations in the future based on 2014-2016 monitoring
data.